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| 2000 Monaco Knight 36Z |
A couple of notes to help make sense of these mad ramblings:
Steve writes the log so think of "I" and Steve as synonymous
Nobody reads this, not even Marnie, so I don't get any feedback - ever
The text and pictures line up nicely on my computer at my resolution only because it would be a little more work to create a seperate table per picture. If it bothers you email me and complain.
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2008 Dec. - Flagstaff, AZ/ Oakland, CA. We did our part for the economy on "Black Friday". Monaco put a lame, CRT television right over the driver when they built the 2000 Knight. We upgraded to a flat screen as shown. The mounting hardware cost as much as the TV! It is a 26" Westinghouse (sp?) from Target at $299. Steve is going to be a fulltime Investment Manager so the ticker tape needs to be readable! My ex-hunting partner had an Elk hunting tag the first weekend and I got a call that he wanted some company. I reported for camping duty and had way, way too much beer and whiskey. We didn't see any Elk. You know you are out of work when... Friends Gary & Jeannie invited me over for Christmas day and suprized me with bags of gifts! The box my new favorite shirt came in doubled as a great gift for Guinness! The week of the 15th was the start of an endless snowstorm. Okay, it was one storm after another... see below for pictures... The weight of the snow and ice tore our slidout awning out of the keeper. I added a warning on the Winter Camping Article. It is probably a good idea to pull in the slides in a heavy snow storm. It is a pain but the possible damage is worse. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!! This month I met Bob. |
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| Guinness' view out the front window | 6:30AM - I de-iced the satellite antenna with hot water | 7:30AM - Still no picture... |
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| That is the driveway, in theory. | Neighboring rig, also the view south through the trees where the elusive 110 & 119 satellites fly. | Ron's Rig |
| 2008 Nov. - Flagstaff, AZ/ Oakland, CA. My old, ex-hunting partner got drawn for deer season and invited me out to the camp along with a bunch of my ex-co-workers from W. L. Gore. Good times! Marnie is still in CA and is investigating living there if they make her a decent offer. Meanwhile Flagstaff got our first snow of the year on the 9th. The owners of MSI treat the Veterans to lunch on Veteran's Day. Here are the heros that I work with every day. On the 14th Marnie accepted an offer so Steve will need to organize the details to move the rig out to CA. I am guessing next spring to get everything in order, for having a simplified life; our's is sure complicated! Steve's back is not doing well and so he decided to take a some time off. It just keeps getting worse so the next step is disability. Check out the new FulltimeRV & Personal Sites Map and let me know if that works better. For a laugh check out a new page I created at http://www.physiolophesy.org/ just for fun! Marnie came back to Flagstaff to pick up her Jeep so we got some much needed time together. We are still newly-weds so we still love each other's company. |
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2008 Oct. - Flagstaff, AZ/ Oakland, CA. The new adventure begins! Marnie took a temporary position near Oakland, CA. as a locum Dosimetrist. She left the second week in Oct. and Steve will hold down the fort until she returns. 10 & 13 Oct. What an exciting time in the Stock Market! This is maybe a once in a lifetime opportunity where wealth changes hands (though I think next decade will bring about another crash, read Rich Dad's Prophesy by Robert Kiyosaki). Just remember that historically there is a double dip in a crash so buy on that second dip. On the 25th Marnie explored Yosemite! On the weekend I got a call from a representative from my Surgeon's office saying I had been approved for a "bone stim". I thought he meant my "tens" unit so I explained that I already had the unit. I figured out that, no, this was something different. The Dr. never said anything to me about it but this rep. drove all the way from Vegas to deliver it to where I work. I can't imagine the cost but now I am on this device every day that delivers magnetic radiation to stimulate bone growth. This month we met John & Rita, Diane and Joe & Dorothy. |
| 2008 September - Flagstaff, AZ Steve signed up for some affiliations to help offset the cost of running and maintaining the sites. These are only products we use, have used or would recommend to family and friends. This site is not intended to be a business (thus the .us extention) so it will stay personal and the only ad banners are here for convenience for us to click on and for those that truly find the links useful. If you are interested in doing this as a home business read more on the Business Opportunities page. Our friends Pat & Carrie of Terra Firma fame are up from South America to visit. They stopped in briefly on their way to Colorado and we expect they will stop back in again this month. Steve ordered and recieved a new rack for the jeep to haul the kayaks. They were stored at a friend's house over the winter. Steve's birthday arrived with an exciting day in the stock market! MSI gives the birthday off so I got to watch it unfold and then fold back up again. We don't have much invested but we did okay. We spent the weekend with friends and wine! Sunday friends in the park threw a Surprize party for Steve! It was way over the top! There was a table full of nice gifts and great food! We have the greatest friends!!!!! This card was from Michael & Cheryl and they bought the rights to a star in Stephen's name. I bet the natives of the populated satellite(s) are on their way now, to take back their star!!! It is in Bootes and if you know what that means I need say no more. We met Ilene & Skip. |
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2008 Aug. - Flagstaff, AZ The rains have taken a break and it is in the 90s now. It is too hot! The single family rental needs painting so Marnie is working on that on weekends. That is tough work in this heat! The rental has been vacant for two months now. We keep two months expenses in the bank accounts so after two months we start to get worried. I know most tenants think of their landlords as money grabbing, penny pinching creeps, but the truth is that rent pays the mortgage and other bills and it is really a pretty fine line in most markets. The doctor has Steve in Physical Therapy. They are being really conservative, "No moving, no pain." We have added a new Business Opportunities page if you are interested in new ideas. We met Michelle this month. |
| 2008 July - Flagstaff, AZ Steve is working way too hard and feels less appreciated for it. It may be time for us to move into the next phase of our plan soon. I think we both hope we can put off moving for another year but it may be beyond our control. Full details are in the Gadgets page but to make a long story short, we had dead chassis batteries again. The Monaco line has a design flaw in that the chassis batteries are not charged when on shore power. The answer is Marnie had to install an "Echo Charger" (due to my back condition) that "Echos" the charge on the house batteries to the chassis batteries. This unit seems to do the job but I won't know for sure until I go to run the engines next month. Our Monsoon season is in full swing this month so we get rain nearly every day and it cools things right off. It is nice and is probably my second favorite time of the year behind September in Flagstaff. The new SGC antenna tuner arrived. It is set up temprorarily on the roof by the ladder with a 60-70 foot long wire. For some reason I can't tune to 40 meters with it but my friend Michael and I had a nice QSO on 80 meters and determined that it works much better than the mobile antenna. |
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2008 June - Flagstaff, AZ June in Flagstaff. Steve is having sciatica and pain so they sent him for a Mylogram CT Scan. They did not clearly indicate how painful this procedure is (they shove a needle into the spinal chord to inject a dye) or that he wouldn't be able to drive home afterwards. Thank God for good friends like Mark and James! The orthosurgeon reviewed the results with the neurosurgeon and they believe the symptoms are likely caused by arachnoiditis. (Yep, I spelled it right the first time [lucky guess.]) I looked it up and, don't look it up. I hope he means that it is temporary. Meanwhile I am supposed to "take it easier" at work. Right. Anyway, the good news is no surgery and the Picc line came out on the 4th 21 June Marnie is in Cleveland for a seminar with her friend Sara. My dad and his wife visited on the 27th. We went out for dinner and sat to just talk for a while. We met Lyman & Mary, Al & Deanna and Jimmie Lee at a birthday party for our friend Bob. |
| 2008 May - Flagstaff, AZ Steve is back at work part time the first week of May. By the second week it is almost full time. It is hard to put in enough hours with all the doctor appointments and I still get tire pretty early in the afternoon. On top of that, I came back to work with an impossible deadline on a difficult piece of machinery. I went to the doctor on 9 May to make up for a cancelled blood pressure appointment (he is going to put me on meds for that too) and coincidentally had the worst headache of my life. After ruling out a migraine and medication withdrawal he said it was stress, TMJ from grinding my teeth. Passive income, passive income, passive income... 13 May we woke up to at least six inches of snow! Only in Flagstaff (and maybe the poles!) We are trying to save money to help catch back up from all our expenses but it is Marnie's birthday this month so I told her we could splurge on that. She picked Pasto's downtown. Snow again on 23 May! Only an inch or two. What crazy weather we have! Marnie hiked the Grand Canyon the last weekend with some friends. This month we met Kelly and Jerry & Barbara. |
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2008 April - Flagstaff, AZ Steve is still recovering from the fusion. It is still a bit cool here, below freezing at night, but the 60 degree daytime temperature is perfect for sitting in the sun and reading. We are in a great spot! Very quiet and the neighbors seem very nice. So far we have met Ron, Mary and Eleanor. We finally installed and tried Skype. We were able to call our friends on Terra Firma and not leave a message. ☺ They called back to tell us that they got the call but didn't get the message. They listened... while we made fools of ourselves shouting at the computer... and they listened... and correctly guessed that there must be something wrong with the mic input on our end. We checked and the input level was turned all the way down. Still no luck. As it turns out, Steve's computer doesn't have a built in microphone. Well, Steve is an Electrical Controls Engineer and an amateur musician. We begged Pat and Carrie for 15 minutes to trouble shoot and figure something out. So Marnie dug through the music electronics bay and found my microphone. It is a balanced mic so she dug through the generic electronics bin and found balanced to unbalanced adaptors and some cable adaptors to get from 1/4" to 1/8" for the computer. Unfortunately hooking up a female to female balanced adaptor to the balanced to unbalanced adaptor had the effect of reducing the mic level to almost nil. Not looking at the clock but assuming our 15 minutes was nearly up or past, the pressure was on. Plus, Steve is on narcotics, some weird drink Marnie made with Clamato and a glass of wine. So, with great chemical inspiration, we try hooking the microphone up to the adaptor for the computer by guessing where one would put a pair of jumper wires with alligator clips. It worked! It sounded muffled on the test but when we called Pat & Carrie back they could hear us well enough to have our first QSO (conversation) via Skype. Carrie mentioned that she thought Steve sounded as if "your polarity is backwards." "I thought that meant I would like Pat." They mistook this as an insult until I emphasized that I would like Pat! On 12 April Marnie found blood and pus in the center incision and we had instructions to call the hospital if this occurred. After a day in the ER Steve has a gauze drain in the right (not center) incision. I think they have this all wrong but the CT scan and ultra sound indicated this location. We'll see what the surgeon says on Monday... Well, he looked at it, literally stabbed the center incision several times and finally agreed with the CT and said that the infection must have been "tracking" to the center incision. On Tuesday he called and sent me to the hospital to be admitted. I am still not sure why as everything they did could have been outpatient but they would prefer to err on the side of safety. They sent me home with a PICC line so that I can give myself IV antibiotics. It is a catheter that goes in the arm and ends right above my heart. I have to inject saline, VANCOmycin for 90 minutes, saline and Heparin twice a day. Great eh? I have to do this for 2-4 weeks. Plus the incision is still open and draining and poor Marnie has to re-pack it with gauze twice a day and change the dressing. Life kinda sucks right now. But it is worse for poor Guinness. Marnie took him to have his glands squeezed (something we have to do periodically because he cannot clear them himself.) He came home with antibiotics (also somewhat normal) and morphine because he is in so much pain. This time they will probably have to remove the gland. 18 Apr. - Today I switched to Cefazolin 1gm over 30 min 3 times a day. This is good news because it means I don't have a resistant infection. |
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| Antibiotic Supplies | Wound Care Supplies | PICC Line |
21 Apr. - The surgeon signs a work release for next Monday. Better yet, we can let the incision close over the next few days. About five more weeks of antibiotics and then it is just followup appointments. We decide to go ahead and have Guinness' right gland removed. The risk is incontinence but he suffers too much not to do something. While in surgery they found an abscess on his tail and cleaned it out too. We always just thought the lump was where the tail had been broken from being stepped on. Two weeks of a cone on his head pissed him off but I think I could tell he was feeling better, relief from the anal gland. Steve saw an old acquaintance from his days at W.L. Gore, Bob and found out he is living here in the park. |
| 2008 March - Camp Verde, AZ Steve is recovering from surgery and is in a lot of pain. We go for about three short walks a day but most of the pain is from muscle stiffness so it is hard to walk. There is little or no pain from the surgery itself. If anything, the numbness and paralysis is getting worse. Something is wrong. The post-op appointment is on the 21st but I don't have a ride because Marnie is out of town. I rescheduled for the 24th. The doctor sees that I am almost completely paralyzed below the right knee "with drop-foot" and gets very concerned. He said that the symptoms are a sign of permanent damage. He manages to schedule me for an emergency MRI within that same hour! He said he would call in a few hours with results. The next day I get a call from Dr. Hales and there is an obvious recurrent disk rupture. He said that they really needed to do a fusion this time. He had me report to the ER the next day and they had me in surgery that night. I was in a room by 10PM to recover. The picture shows what they did to me. Dr. Hales (Ortho) had Dr. Avery (Neuro [he did my neck fusion in 2002]) as co-pilot in the operating room so I saw both of them repeatedly after the surgery. Dr. Hales said they found a piece of vertebra in the disk material and that the vertebra was "falling apart". This is probably part of the extreme symptoms but Dr. Avery thought that it was possible that they had knocked the piece off during the surgery. Poor Marnie, on top of all of this had to move the RV to Flagstaff. We had bought an extra week at Distant Drums so that we could decide where we wanted to be after we talked to the doctor. Well, with the suprize surgery it made sense to be in Flagstaff for a short ride home from the hospital. Unfortunately, she is not comfortable driving so we asked a professional driver that is a friend of ours to come down and drive the RV with one of the Jeeps hooked up while Marnie drove the other Jeep. He also helped hook up the rig in the new space. All of this while I am recovering in the hospital. Poor Marnie is just exhausted. Since I wasn't due to leave the Hospital until noon on Friday she got to sleep in a bit and set the rig up for my handicap while recovering. I definately married the right woman! It is a Mobile Home space and it is very nice and quiet. There is a mix of mobiles and RVs here and all the residents seem to be older-retired folks so far. |
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2008 February - Camp Verde, AZ Still in Camp Verde. Pictured is one of the problems in Steve's back. You don't need your doctorate to see the problem in this one! On the 6th the problem deteriorated and Steve can barely walk and is in a lot of pain! For Valantine's Day we made a short trip to Connecticut to visit Marnie's Grandma (95) and her Aunt & Uncle. Her cousin Dan and his daughter Courtney stopped by while we were there for a few hours. We then met up with all of Marnie's siblings and her Mom & Dad at a rental farmhouse called "Quiet Acres" in Pennsyvania. This is the first time we have stayed at a rental house so we were interested from a business perspective too. Uncle Pat stopped by with his father-in-law for a short visit. With 14 people, half of them kids, Steve spent a lot of time in his room watching TV and napping! This is the first time all of Marnie's family and spouses were in the same place at the same time. Because the disc in Steve's back is pressing on the spinal cord (not just a nerve root) they scheduled surgery right away. On the 26th Dr. Hales performed a microdiscectomy and Steve is recovering at home in the motorhome. The material Dr. Hales removed had been there long term so the disc re-herniated sometime after the first surgery on L4-L5 back in 1989. Unfortuanately, the problems we thought were cause by waiting too long for the first surgery, were probably due to the re-herniation and could have been treated. Now, after all this time, it is difficult to predict how much motion and feeling might come back. Only time will tell. |
| 2008 January - Camp Verde, AZ On the first the Casino put on a huge fireworks show. Woke us up ☺ Steve started having more back symptoms in September while on vacation. Then in December he fell on the ice and was pretty sore. The first week in January Steve's company sent him to Minneapolis and the trip, especially having to lift heavy luggage in and out of the trunk, did his back in. The MRI results look pretty bad. So much for avoiding another surgery. ☻ It has been in the mid 20s several times over the last few weeks so we have had to deal with freezing water lines. We will probably not come down here again next year. What's the point, If we still have to deal with freezing weather? We met Ken, Shirley from Canada and Minnie & Ron |
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